Sans Fig Leaf
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"Evoking"
5 May, 2006
Sometimes the words just pour out of my fingers. The words seem like a living thing, or a force of nature, and I am simply the conduit that brings them to the reader.
Other times I agonize over every word.
Except no, I don't. I don't agonize over individual words, or commas, or paragraph breaks. I may argue about them with someone who suggests I do it differently, but I don't agonize over the details.
What I agonize over is the direction. An unfinished story can spend weeks, months, or even years, languishing in the pile while I fret and worry and argue with myself and which way to go next. And a blank page, that can feel so much worse. At least with an unfinished tale there's something already started. It's true that in a later draft I may throw out everything that's there at the moment, but a start is much better than a blank page. An unfinished tale has fewer possible directions to choose from.
Once I pick a direction, the words start flowing. Not always in the force of nature way, but stringing words together never seems to take any effort.
Some people think that's talent. They're wrong. The stringing together of the words doesn't come from talent; it's practice.
It's like when learning how to play a musical instrument. You spend years leaning to play scales and arpeggios and chords--various pleasing combinations of notes which, by themselves aren't terribly interesting. However, having learned them so well that you can feel them in your very bones, when you are presented with a new piece of music, you find the individual building blocks you've learned before. Sometimes the patterns skip and embellish, or they weave in and out of each other, but you find them. Your eye recognizes them on the sheet of music, or your ear anticipates them, and you just follow the patterns that have been assembled into something which is great than its parts.
That's where the talent comes in: the assembly of the parts into a pleasing and functional whole. Particularly for a writer, unless you have the genius of Lewis Carroll, you are limited to words which your audience already knows. Yes, some readers can deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word from the context. Others may take the time to try to look up an unfamiliar word. But the majority of the words you use have to be words the reader already knows. And the order of the words have to conform closely enough to standards already known to the reader to convey meaning.
The artistry of writing comes from the arrangement of the familiar and of the understood into a whole which occasionally surprises, gives a new perspective, or maybe even brings forth an epiphany. We use the familiar to evoke the unknown.
It can be hard. Even when the force-of-nature type of writing is upon us, there comes a point when we have to survey what we've done, then decide which parts to cut away and which to keep. There is always something that needs to be removed; usually several things that ought to be rearranged.
For some writers the hardest part is knowing when to stop editing. There comes a point when you must cease fiddling with it and let the piece of writing take wing. It may soar, or it may falter haltingly on its way, or it may even crash ignomiously. There is no way to know until you release it.
Many who aspire to write never believe their writing needs revising. Knowing what to get rid of takes a certain amount of ruthlessness. It doesn't matter that I know, on an intellectual level, that all these words and phrases are building blocks that I've used again and again. On an emotional level, each sentence is one of my babies. Fortunately, once you've been ruthless a time or two, it becomes easier, though seldom less painful.
You get used to the pain. Or maybe I just tell myself that I've gotten used to it. I don't know. I just keep plugging away until it feels done.
Then I release it and trust it to take wing.
--Truman Capote
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